I get that not everybody loves blogs. Really. But to say that blogs are isolating and bloggers lonely sorts living in a fantasy world shows that Calgary professor Michael Keren is seriously out of touch with reality himself. Read this Globe And Mail article called Author laments lonely life of bloggers then come back here, scroll down and share your thoughts on whether blogging has made your social life stronger or weaker.
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If some professor in Calgary wants to provide his opinion on blogs he is certainly entitled to it.
Could he be denigrating bloggers because a little controversy will help his book sales? The only other way is to force students to buy it as part of his course curriculum. Not that a professor would ever do that…
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this article.
“they are not real” and “who cares if they’re not real people?”
I digress… blogs are made by human beings, and are read by human beings… how can this be unreal? Only the medium and reach have evolved.
Blogging to get fame is akin to funding a company to get rich… That’s the wrong way to do it. You blog or you start a company because you believe you can offer something unique, something of interest to others.
I blog and I read other’s blog by interest and to share and discover new ideas, open my mind and learn about people without being constrained by the limits of my physical surrounding.
And trough mine and others blogs, I’m able to meet people, real human beings, and in some case, meet them in person: this is real.
S.Hamel
http://immeria.net
We should keep in mind that the isolated/lonely/fantasyland stuff is apparently only an incidental part of the book, not the professor’s main point.
Having said that, I found the ideas portrayed in the article so laughable that I was almost moved to leave a comment on the Globe site – until I found that the Globe’s blog-loving readers had already stepped up to crush him like a bug.
Anyone who blogs (or even participates in other people’s blogs) knows that it creates new, genuine, multi-dimensional relationships with all kinds of people (and casual or shallow relationships with many more). Whether or not these people ever meet or even step out of the house again has nothing to do with their experience with blogs.
Bloggers should keep in mind that aficionados of many pastimes – from movies and comic books to model planes and alternative lifestyles – have always been mocked or criticized by self-appointed elites. And the media gleefully quote these because new and conflicting ideas are their stock in trade. It’s nothing personal, just the way some people over-react to change.
I guess I’ll never get tenure now…
Hey Ken,
I wax poetic about this “person” over on my Blog and the comments are classic there as well.
It’s insulting and I’m angered at the newspapers for running this story almost as much as Keren’s comments.
Very sad.
In my neck of the woods, the story made the front cover of The Montreal Gazette.
I go nuts over here:
http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000856.html